Scene #2506: On Their Level

Owner	Pose
Starbound Flotilla	Matter Manipulator cores are an incredible rarity among this particular galaxy. However, so too is communication that's difficult for Zwei's tremendous monitoring and decryption abilities to deal with. As such, Alpha Mu Ori Majoris 4b, one of a cluster of very dusty baked-orange dead worlds in a radioactive-type star system whose sun is particularly focused on very wide ranges of electromagnetic emission, is outrageously hostile to most life. As such, it is, according to the transmission, where one anonymous party representing an organization of presumably outrageously ill repute could easily trade such a rare artifact to a Hylotl solar baron of some repute, who has need of it for some field agent or another. The price of a high-level artifact like this is at least several planets worth of whole economies, and is authenticated by way of physical message courier, and as such Zwei can't cut in legitimately or by hijacking identities. If they want this, they'll have to take it. The meeting isn't for several days, but any monitoring will be able to tell that whoever this is has already set up a base on 4b. A structure that can't house more than a few dozen people, formed purely out of pixel-fabricated materials. Squat, sturdy, sitting in the middle of a crater on the sunblasted planet. No readings one could easily find indicate that these people are on a level at all above the mid-range spacefaring race level that Zwei has mostly encountered, for the most part, and this is probably a standard deal for them. What else is detected will depend entirely on how Zwei chooses to approach them. Nothing here seems like it's enough to justify more caution than a head-on charge, really.
Zwei	Zwei's certainly waited long enough, though considering the scope of the target it's been after, it could have also taken a lot longer. Being able to keep ears on so many worlds at once has its distinct, often overlooked advantages. Other advantages include being able to walk around on the surface of a radiation bombarded hellscape without assistance, strolling around in the sizzling heat of the highly reactive star as though a warm summer's day. Asche is at any rate. Weiss' specific talents are being used elsewhere, and there doesn't seem to be much need of infiltration work when faced only with a small, out of the way safehouse relying on remoteness for security rather than military power. Crushing it by force should be easy. Of course, having no real idea what a matter manipulator core is or is made out of, bombing it from orbit is out of the question. For all Zwei knows, they could be incredibly fragile, or dangerously unstable. Instead, Asche has descended to earth, trudging forward across the cracked and blasted ground with eerie silence save for the crunches of his footsteps alone. The air shimmers faintly in a globe around him where his field has walled off the ionizing effects of the star. At his current pace, he seems as if he intends to just walk right in, maybe bust through the walls with his bare hands. Not exactly careless, he's already deployed a light web of tactical reconnaissance drones in the air, surveying the relatively blank landscape less than the activity signals of the structure itself. Hard penetration is being used to gain an idea of the floor plan, and spectrometers are tuned up to the max to try and separate any anomalous energy readings from inside from the background, but aside from a basic sweep for vital signs, not much else is going on.
Starbound Flotilla	Several dozen lifesigns. Hirelings, with relatively high-level arms and armor for this world, but nothing on par with Asche's weaponry. An organization that's quite willing to sell things for entire worlds has a certain minimum level of power, and it's likely that this could contend with a lot of military force. They are, oddly, all Avian. One stands out; his armor, sidearm, and power cutlass mark him as an Avian pirate, and two anomalous energy signatures on him, one at his belt and one case-muffled signature somewhere near his hand, make it obvious that this is the most important cargo. The floorplan is now easily known. Fairly straightforward. Meant to be a site for a trade, little more. Few wide areas, though one core one at the center. Plenty of residential things and security infrastructure, none of it mattering. Whether Asche decides to speed up or decides to simply keep his pace up, he'll find little resistance from the walls, nor from the guards who immediately respond to the perimeter alarms with ineffectual attempts to fire on him with their heavy ballistic weapons, backed up by an array of automated turrets using anti-infantry and anti-vehicle weapons of all kinds. So far so good. The escalating fire patterns could be indicative of someone trying to test a target's resilience, but it's probably just natural escalation as things go to higher and higher alert, nothing to worry about. He has his pick of how he wants to breach the trade facility and assault the single trader who seems to have the objective; he's on the move to the opposite end of the facility himself.
Zwei	Alright, more firepower than expected, but nothing outside of what Asche can handle. No alarm bells trip in Zwei's mind at the results of the scan, and it isn't really the type to get overly suspicious when things seem easy, going more by probability than any kind of sense of narrative or paranoia. With a lock on the Avian leader carrying what seems extremely likely to be the core, Asche has little reason to deviate from the course, and so far no prompting to enact any kind of complex plan. What could be considered strange to a veteran of multiversal killbots is he doesn't seem to be concerned with massacring the goons on the way in. They seem to pose no credible threat to him, and so he has no reason to kill them. Considering how easy it would probably be to do so, one could theorize that he has at least some small reason /not/ to kill them. The same doesn't seem to apply to the defensive turrets however. As slugs and explosives saw through the air every which way, subtly diverting in course once they cross the invisible boundary around him to stitch the walls and floor rather than his armour, he wades through the steadily increasing volume of fire to violently rip the installations from the power grid with brute force, crushing and scattering them to silence their gunfire. Having been pixel fabricated, it doesn't seem likely that the facility will have any particularly glaring structural flaws or weaknesses, and so he simply opts for the most expedient route forward of smashing through the lowest yield materials that present themselves, driving his massive arms through walls and doors like a spike driver and steadily peeling them apart until he can just body check through them. His pace is rather leisurely. Even if the pirate captain outruns him, he only has so much building to hide in. The moment he steps outside or takes to the sky, Asche can run him down easily; or such is the plan.
Starbound Flotilla	The tactical drone network identifies the target retrieving some kind of entanglement-based communications device and immediately directing something through it. Asche will have several seconds of extremely passive-aggressive ways of engaging in combat, simply blasting his way through doors and walls, before there's any tangible result. The avian goons continue their gunfire, despite it not working at all. What could possibly motivate that?
Starbound Flotilla	After several seconds of such charging through the facility, Asche's longer-range sensors will detect something decellerating from a fraction of lightspeed into a stable position high above the planet. Without dedicated sensors pointing that way, that's about all he'll get, but notably, trajectory looks like whatever it was was hiding at Alpha Mu Ori Majoris 4's L3 Lagrange point, obfuscated by the Radioactive Star's nature. Before it's finished stopping, and only just when several Avians have cleared the area, a particle beam of approximately a thumb's width, suffering no scattering due to a lack of planetary atmosphere, streaks from the orbital object towards Asche, fixed on the center of his shield as observed from the pattern of redirected munitions by the keen camera eyes of the turrets. It conveys all the solar energy efficiently gathered by the satilite in its superconductor over the many days it took to set up this trade site.
Starbound Flotilla	If Asche can get out of the way, its point of impact is likely to plasmize and slag the ground several meters wide on the dusty rock, and pierce far below; thankfully a lack of atmosphere means there's little to convey 'explosion' that can't be managed by the nearby Avians' armor. It is, in fact, an underwhelmingly non-explosive assault. It is similar to the many booby traps Asche set off and simply tanked on his way in, utterly precise and meant to prioritize instantly incapacitating a target over impressing it.
Zwei	Quantum entanglement communications are a little annoying, though perhaps not as surprising as it should be, given the relatively high scale of this group's technology. Trusting that the physics work in a relatively similar fashion to the scientific baseline of most worlds, Zwei figures there isn't really much it can do to intercept or read it, but that it seems obvious that the Avian is calling for help. Not entirely unexpected. Being fired on by precise, orbital range, directed energy weapons in the double digits of order of magnitude is significantly more so. Having not actually encountered any warships of really significant size in this world, the level of sophistication is something of a surprise, and not really aided by the fact that Zwei had gone for speed rather than efficiency of preparation here. Asche is ludicrously fast for his mass, but with only the split second energy spike of the weapon's firing phase as warning, there's only so much he can accelerate out of the way. The amount of heat let off by his thrusters is far more dangerous than the backblast of the particle beam, punching straight through the ceiling and intersecting his personal interdiction field, slightly off target due to the last second dodge, but still requiring a significant degree of diversion. The energy it takes to redirect the beam just a couple of degrees to the side of Asche's chest drains a massive chunk of his reserves all at once; more than he can replace in the short term, and enough that sustaining subsequent shots would be dangerously impractical.
Zwei	The situation having escalated several threat levels, Asche drops the leisurely pace and engages his burners to full, sacrificing a little more energy to simply rocket out through the facility's upper floors, taking advantage of the weakness presented by the new hole, to burst out into the open air in a high velocity spray of construction grade shrapnel. The move gives him more room to achieve a higher speed and thus permit greater evasion, and also space to seed further, more powerful drones. His pylons rattle off silently into the micro-atmosphere as scores of tactical units are shot off into the sky at hypersonic speed, accelerating slightly under their own propulsion to counteract gravity, with no air resistance to slow them. They should shortly be within range to relay detailed information on the orbital craft, hopefully including a visual. Meanwhile, the ones planetside swarm into the breach, zipping throughout the halls to try and locate any energy signatures consistent with the teleporter technology common to this world.
Starbound Flotilla	The man himself is equipped with BLINK TELEPORTATION. Short-range, line-of-sight calculations only. Partially automated, partially manual; he's built to contend with things he can neither tank nor dodge. By entangling the activation systems with a fabric layer residing under his armor, and ignoring any data consistent with his actual movements or velocities that are lower than threat levels, he will automatically BLINK his way away from damage that is both sublight and unable to pierce his shielded armor systems, suffering only a fraction of the damage at the cost of losing track of his position. An Erchius-based elemental module flash-cools areas when it's detected that they're heating up from energy-based weapons as well; his entire armor set is design-wise kludged together to contend on a level far above his own. Thank god for high-powered sensors, that setup would be annoying as shit to figure out in practice.
Starbound Flotilla	There are several other teleportation-based traps, designed to teleport volumes of superheated plasma around unsuspecting foes. This must be some of the booby traps that can't reach Asche's level, but are designed for things more powerful than the Starbound universe anyway, somewhere between the two tiers. Easy enough to avoid since Asche can remember every location at once.
Starbound Flotilla	The satellite itself has expended one CAPACITOR charged by its SUPERCAPACITOR; it seems to be a rotating array of capacitors meant to fire repeatedly, but it has a similarly kludged-together look. This man, whoever he is, has clearly done pretty much just whatever he can do to make something that can contend at a high level out of what he can scrape together in this particular galaxy. Fragile. Notable features are Erchius-based solar panels, which are outrageously efficient.
Starbound Flotilla	Another satellite of the same make is trying to decellerate now, after the first one failed. How MANY are at L3?! Like the others, it's already firing at Zwei, ignoring the fact that any one of those drones could take one out by bumping it wrong, just trying to outpace Zwei's ability to take them down. First the new arrival, then the old one, each still firing on Asche, though now that he's a moving target, it's a bit trickier to get that dead-center shot.
Starbound Flotilla	Meanwhile, down on the surface, waves of heat from thrusters slag armor and blast out walls, ceilings, and floors, possibly killing several Avians. The hirelings are actually retreating using their own ship teleporters now, but the leader doesn't seem concerned. Biometric scans show an inhuman calmness, a tense posture of preparation. He's immediately on the move, heading out the back of the facility despite the fact that this leaves him vulnerably in open ground. He's firing on the more powerful drones if he can see them, with a tremendous sidearm. No railgun, teleportation, particle beam, or similar technologies; this is a mechanical accelerator, able to fire more varied munitions, and drawing insane amounts of power with each inefficient but powerful shot. Oddly out of place? Well, doesn't matter.
Zwei	Zwei has to seriously revise its opinion on this place. Whoever designed it was both ballsy and paranoid as all hell. In retrospect, it seems pretty obvious that the only kind person willing to trade a matter manipulator core would be the kind that plans to survive the absolute worst. The absence of some kind of long ranged teleporter that could be used to jump someone to the other side of the galaxy in an emergency is the main thing, since that puts Asche on less of a strict time limit to catch the guy. The personal teleporter however, is perhaps even more of an inconvenience. The satellites are currently the more pressing concern, due to the number of shots they'll be able to put on him while chasing down the Avian, and the very real danger of that number multiplying as more and more jump in. Engaging in furious tactical simulation for a split second, Asche drastically alters the pattern of his personal interdiction field, introducing controlled instabilities in the algorithm to force its shape to bubble and distort wildly, displacing the mathematical center in completely random ways. Prolonged analysis will eventually reveal the area that never shifts, but it'll take a while before that value becomes possible to derive. This isn't terribly useful without the second part however, in which he programs its behaviour to divert all electromagnetic radiation, effectively blacking out the area. It renders him half-blind as well, but the controls on his drones are entanglement based, so he can still use them to see outside.
Zwei	Setting a timer on how long he predicts it'll take the satellites to zero in on him, he begins accelerating at full burn, blasting out over the desert surface in a steady climb into low orbit, where the planet's surface can't serve as an adequate reflected background against him. To preserve the integrity of the blackout field, he arms a purely chemical mass-driver, far more powerful than should actually be allowed on any kind of vehicle, but still relatively slow and primitive compared to his usual. He sights the first satellite from long range, adjusting for the gravity well of both the planet and the star, and the rotation of both, before firing a solid slug designed to simply shatter the target through hypervelocity shockwave rather than an explosive. He doesn't wait for the attack to connect before moving onto the next, attenting to gun down each station as they jump in, willing to chance the war of attrition until it looks like a losing prospect.
Starbound Flotilla	The satellites are blinded; while their beams can still fire, creating impassable columns between the vague area of the distorting stealth bubble and the leader, they can't work too well. One goes down instantly with that mass-driven impact; both had a SAIL unit welded to them, though, which lets the second one, in the gap between shots, calculate the trajectory of the projectile that hit the first in a split second, and get off half a shot at where it predicts Asche is going based on that trajectory and the acceleration of the mass as a whole, shortcutting the derivation of the center! Hopefully it'll force him to decellerate, at least. That one goes down too, with the second shot, as does a third and forth satellite coming in shortly after. Looks like the cliche Orbital Strike system is being rendered worthless here by Asche's anti-space abilities. So why is it that the leader -- now that both he and Asche are out in the open, Asche can get a good look at him -- still doesn't show a single sign of panic?
Starbound Flotilla	The man who represents the group's interests today is an intense sort. He is an avian, but doesn't wear anything even remotely similar to standard Avian wear. His outfit is pure practicality; light armor featuring a medium-sized armored backpack housing important modules, heft body armor over the torso to handle lower-level impacts, and speed-boosting mechanical augmentations. His feathers are a deep gray, and his body is incredibly fit and well-muscled, clearly genetically and chemically enhanced. His communicator lights up again, something else being brought in maybe?
Zwei	The drones following the captain don't let up, swerving down from the sky to track him as he makes a break for it. Their miniscule size coupled with their omnidirectional thrust makes them especially difficult to actually shoot down, though direct hits obliterate them pretty much instantly, despite the space age materials they're made of. A handful of them begin firing on him simply to test the automatic reactions of that blinksuit. Their weapons aren't really practical for hard targets, mostly only for mowing down annoying trash, but they should still hurt all the same. Having to weave between and swerve around a hail of super heavy particle beam fire is making it exceptionally difficult for Asche to actually reach him though, despite the mobility advantage he has over him. Most of the drones in orbit start to divert downwards to bolster the dwindling numbers below. It'd be a real pain to lose all eyes on him.
Starbound Flotilla	As soon as Asche has cleared some distance from the facility -- he's bearing down FAST on this guy -- something surreal happens. There's little time to react, even for a machine. There was absolutely no sign of anything about to strike from below, no energy signatures or anything. As far as Asche can tell, a column of matter maybe a human's fist wide explodes from below, splashing slagged rock up. The matter expanding due to being superheated from below, it rises in a column that provides the only forewarning before it turns to plasma and disintegrates under the assault of a TREMENDOUS particle beam that seems to be being emitted constantly from... A nickel deposit far underground, which was subtly hollowed to build a massive particle accelerator. This man apparently sets up his illegal trade sites with "landmines" designed to punch upwards on the Kardashev scale, and he just tried to set one off under Asche.
Starbound Flotilla	Meanwhile, the man himself is suffering the effects of the impacts. Kinetic strikes BLINK him automatically; where they would normally tear straight through his suit's meager armor, they only manage to impart a fraction of their energy before the circuit is closed by entangled particles and his body is mercifully shifted out of the way. Photonic or particle weapons are something he can't develop much against; beams will get a good chance to damage systems before his erchius elemental module flash-cools them, but thermal damage is their core effect, so at least the man himself seems to survive!
Starbound Flotilla	The man himself swiftly realizes the issue of engaging the drones and their superior movement over open ground. However, something odd happens; while the first half-dozen satellites boosted their way over here to a spot ABOVE the planet's surface, and fired down, the next ones do something even more absurd. They stop at an area roughly parallel to the planet's surface, and instead of firing perpendicularly, they fire from the sides. These have too much microatmosphere not to scatter, but the man's sensor suite and SAIL communications allow him to spot and call for a lightly scattered particle beam spray that has been fired just a little under the horizon, bent over the curvature of the planet. These have the advantage of not being near those drones brought up to space, and creating more barriers for Asche.
Zwei	Seriously beginning to question how much in the way of resources this one guy has, Zwei starts going further down the list of tactical options, planning even while Asche makes a fireworks show of zigzagging at spine-breaking speed through the air, boosting over, under and around beam after beam in the kind of graceless, frighteningly efficient dance only exhibited by hardware that has solved combat to a formula. Stopping in one place would likely mean being hit by multiple at a time, and firing the mass driver over the horizon is just begging for it to get shot down, and so he discards the bulky gun and instead disengages a swarm of micro missiles, tumbling out of the field in semi-random freefall before actually firing off, arcing high into the air and streaking over the barrage to land in front of the fleeing avian. Dropping them straight on him would trip the teleporter, and so they land at such a distance that the blast shouldn't actually be lethal, but close enough that the pressure wave should at least knock him back. More importantly, the craters left behind are vertically extremely deep, making getting across them a dubious proposition, but going around them a big time waster.
Starbound Flotilla	The man himself is overwhelmed by the pressure wave, but thankfully a more heavy impact is cushioned by the lack of atmosphere. He's doing his god damndest for an organic to take on his foe in as rigorous an emulation of space physics as he can, which has created several advantages. The heavy cratering in the environment leaves him bouncing in its interior. If Asche can keep up the dodging, this unsteadiness will possibly leave the man himself vulnerable as he scrambles to get a bearing on his environment, grunting heavily and trying to steady his bouncing fall with surreal Avian grace.
Zwei	Having bought some extra time to catch up, Asche drops the pretense of stealth and allows the black blot in the sky to disappear, regulating his field again to push the sparse atmosphere out of the way and provide a totally frictionless flight vacuum. He arms a more powerful, long-ranged raiser rifle in the interim, setting the rydberg amplification to an extremely low value, imparting only a small amount of kinetic energy in exchange for the projectile moving at near-lightspeed and with gravity being a non-issue. A rapidfire series of shots flash out over the horizon, puncturing each weapons platform several time to try and silence their fire, before Asche finally puts on the burn and dives down to try and engage the plucky, max level adventurer one on one.
Starbound Flotilla	Slamming harshly onto the ground on his talons, finally, the man tosses the hefty case he's holding his cargo in to one side, drawing his Power Cutlass. The Lagrange Strikes didn't do it, and the Nickel Mine didn't do it, so he's going all out now. Asche's vision is likely unrestricted to his 'face', and so he'll get a good look at the brief sight of the man's eyes. His eyes -- stained a deep red with years of chemical self-enhancement -- contain such a tremendous degree of palpable willpower and sheer concentrated strength of personality that it's no wonder the Avians from before refused to retreat. With one smooth motion, his -- breech loaded? -- mechanical accelerator weapon is loaded with something popped out of the hilt of his sword, and he levels his sidearm square at Asche's chest, albeit from the base of the mess of craters. The way he looks, every inch of his physiology, make it clear that whatever he just loaded is something major. Which means, of course, that it's time to have a brief mexican showdown, as if Asche moves quick he ought to be able to get his Raiser pointed away from the shattered satellites and at the man himself right when the barrel of the man's sidearm is pointed at him.
Starbound Flotilla	The man has recalculated his Blink, to get him right in engagement range when the next strike hits. He is utterly confident that Asche will not miss an opportunity to fire at him. If Asche doesn't shoot first, he's going to speak up. "Machine. Are you here to kill me? Or do you have another objective?" His voice is warped by varied multilations from his enhancements, and transmitted by simple broadcasted radio, almost quaint. His tone also seems entirely accepting and not begrudging in the least, as if he thinks Asche would be entirely justified if he was here to murder him. He is also straight to business; no introductions, no fancy wording, no compliments to the being that just survived his gauntlet intended to kill things that might, say, harvest stars.
Zwei	In a strange sort of way, Zwei appreciates the Avian captain. Specifically, the Weiss side of its cognitive process dislikes him for the level of danger he presents, even if she is interested in what kind of psychological profile could come up with all this, while the Asche side is clearly able to recognize the narrative unfolding from the other side; the story of a weary and jaded veteran, old hand to the worst the galaxy has to offer, beset by yet another strange and unfamiliar foe that could be the end of him, but unwilling to even so much as humour the idea so long as he still draws breath. Pirate he may be, but the Armiger can't help but feel some manner of respect for the man. Having shown this much wiliness already, Asche isn't prepared to underestimate whatever else his opponent might have up his sleeve. Retro thrusters flare as the Armiger rapidly deccelerates as a matter of tactical flexibility, levelling the rifle one-handed at the Avian in the crater while rezzing a second one akimbo, keeping it fixed on the skyline to preempt the possibility of more weapons platforms. He stays carefully hovering over the planet's surface to avoid setting down on any proximity or pressure based traps, set at a distance that exploits his reaction time, treading the fine line where he should be able to put a shot in his opponent before he can react, while allowing himself enough time to react himself. He remains in place, a data pulse away from firing. "You know what I am here for by now." he rumbles, scathing electronic tones raking over the blasted earth. "And I know a man like you does not value his own life more greatly than it. What use is it to you? There are easier ways of becoming rich, and one man could never hope to flit away the rewards in an entire lifetime."
Starbound Flotilla	"The Matter Manipulator. I know old ones when I see them, only ones who I can't kill this way. Old beings taking what belongs to old beings." The Avian narrows his crimson eyes. "You're right. Not worth dying for. And I don't intend to. I back down when I have no other options." His control over his muscles is outrageous; he can command every physiological response that Zwei's hyperobservant systems could detect as meaning he's about to fire, and go through them outrageously slowly. His physiological responses still indicate utter calmness and control. "You will have my surrender if what I have left does not work. Take it and leave me, or die trying. That's the way this ends." And then he pulls the trigger, though it's an inevitability that Asche will get to fire his weapon or dodge before the finger gets done pulling the trigger. But it's just a sidearm. The projectile has a few power signatures, but nothing spectacular. The inefficient weapon's projectile is likely to harmlessly bounce away from any remaining shield energy or even just armor plating, and barely take a bit of energy off. At the very least, it's close range enough that he can't entirely dodge it, but it's a very anticlimactic shot for something that seemed so important.
Zwei	Knowing the erchius powered suit is still functional, Asche doesn't waste his energy attempting to paste the Avian. Instead, as the gun fires, he adjusts his aim minutely and blasts the sidearm out of the pirate's hand, likely atomizing it on impact. The projectile however, he has an interest in. Whichever direction the projectile leaves the barrel (or is hurled away from the explosion), he expands his interdiction field to catch it, expending a little extra energy to halt it entirely rather than knocking it off to the side. He wants to see what exactly it is, and why the Avian had placed so much faith in it. Both of his weapons remained armed and ready however. He wouldn't put it past him to be bluffing yet more tricks. It's uncomfortable really having no idea what someone else is thinking.
Starbound Flotilla	The gun explodes viciously, blasting out of the pirate's hand. It's not covered by his Blinksuit's protection, and so the inhumanly precise strike hits true, tearing the gun apart. It wasn't particularly important. Asche, on the other hand, does something that's theoretically intelligent to do, but practically may have a bad effect. The bullet does, in fact, stop, and Zwei can, in fact, examine it closely with sensors. What they find should be processed to the full realization of what it means right about when it takes effect.
Starbound Flotilla	When the sensors scan the interior of the solid projectile, they find why the gun was so inefficient. It's not a gun at all. It was originally designed as a scientific tool, intended to launch sensor modules with tremendous force. This particular sensor module is bonded via entanglement communications to the Avian's sword, and is currently busy transmitting copious quantities of data about how Asche's shields are interacting with it, which is to say, by way of entanglement, trying to feed the man copious amounts of data about the specific mechanisms that are used to stop kinetic strikes against Zwei.
Zwei	The wily sonuvvabitch just never runs out of these things does he? Were the sensor transmitting on an actual frequency, Asche could pretty easily deciphers its function, intercept the original data and rewrite it with faked diagnostics, but he arrives at the correct conclusion in the same, instantaneous timeframe the device has to transfer its initial findings. He's not entirely sure if those readings will even benefit the captain in the end, but at this point, the Armiger is taking no chances, and swiftly crushes the sensor pod between two planes of opposing force. Unfortunately, having any data at all on the interdiction field is more than he can let slide, and so he makes the first strike. The sword is obviously extremely important, and may actually be protected in some way to make distroying it the same was as the sidearm impractical. He drops the gun in his left hand, snapping the rightmost one down at the Avian's feet and pumping an explosive penetrator deep into the ground, reaching and detonating at such a distance that it causes the ground to explode under his feet hard enough to throw him into the air, but not enough to be considered dangerous enough to trigger a teleport. In the brief period the man doesn't have his feet on the ground, Asche rushes him, boosting forward to intercept him in mid-air and try and simply wrench the cutlass out of his hand with his overpowering physical strength.
Starbound Flotilla	Perhaps fractions of nanoseconds or so have passed since the trigger was pulled. That's all it took for the sensor to reach the shield, sense it, be processed by Asche, and crushed. The pieces of the Avian's gun are still falling apart in the captain's hands. When Asche fires his weapon a second time, that's when the light cone of the wireless broadcast between the gun's remaining shattered pieces and the captain's Blink module finally does reach a sensor or two; the bastard set himself to Blink right when he pulled the trigger, that son of a bitch. The lightspeed strike slams into the ground under the Avian's feet and he's launched, but it's clear now that he entirely expects to have to contend with a creature that thinks at the speed of light as he vanishes just when Asche's hand might close around the cutlass.
Starbound Flotilla	The Blink goes off and the captain is rushing forward, suddenly from behind; unfortunately, he's unsteady and has already lost some speed enhancers due to damage from the explosion under him. His reaction time is enhanced by years of chemical therapies but it's still measured in nanoseconds, giving Asche an eternity to deal with him... If he can. His Power Cutlass has optimized every setting it can based on the data fed back from the module; it has attempted to ruthlessly analyze the specific mechanics of how the shielding system actually interacts with the particles. Frequency of kinetic impulse is matched with constructive and destructive interference. Heat is added at just the right amount that might make it tough to get a proper entangling lock. There's countermeasures in this for all sorts of high tech shielding besides that, but it's hyperfocused on just that one shield, and while the valuable data about how the shield works has yet to be transmitted or even observed by the Avian, still working in electrochemical time, it's known by the sword that attempts to impale its way through the shield like a knife through hot butter and slam its way -- unsteadily, due to the aforementioned explosion -- into Asche's chest, using the Avian's massively enhanced vertical mobility.
Zwei	Asche wastes no time in unnecessary expressions of shock or frustration. He wasn't built with the desire to do so, nor even the facial means. He wheels around the instant the captain vanishes, stabilizing his position with a brief flutter of multiple verniers, turning the exact number of degrees needed to face the new attack in the shortest amount of time with negligible overshoot. Uncertain of what kind of cooldown the blink might have, or how many blinks he's set it to, and having no doubt that the captain might have gone to such quintuple redundant extremes as hardwiring in an additional blink if the sword fails to meet a target in under a certain timeframe, Asche reacts by catching the lunge in the palm of his hand. The blade sprouts through the back of his gauntlet, white hot from the energy required to pierce the armour around the motive joints, but the exchange of blows allows him to close his talons around the hilt and hopefully crush it. At this point he isn't really concerned if he breaks the Avian's own hand. There are certain things more important going on right now.
Starbound Flotilla	The Avian's hand is crushed; the hilt of the weapon is shattered. It didn't even have time to move the data from RAM to its storage, much less transmit it to anyone anywhere. Any secrets are safe. It has now been four nanoseconds. In a few dozen miliseconds, the sensation of pain from the captain's hand will reach his brain, not before they reach reflexes in the arm. A few dozen more, and he'll realize that he just enacted his plan; it will take several hundred additional miliseconds to realize that his hand is experiencing pain and that this indicates that the plan has failed. A few hundred more miliseconds later, he grunts in pain. Half a second has passed from the moment he ended the mexican standoff; his arm is limp, the pieces of his gun clatter to the cratered ground, the crushed wreck of his sensor hits the surface of this planet, and the shards of his power cutlass strike the ground, white hot, melting the dusty planet's surface. It takes him approximately 800 miliseconds to make the decision to surrender, and two additional seconds to raise his remaining arm enough to cast off his communications module, depower his armor, and put his remaining hand up in surrender. In twenty seconds, the dust from the micromissiles that made these craters will clear; Asche can have the case, still bearing the Matter Manipulator core, well in hand by then.
Zwei	Asche shakes his hand in just such a calculated way that the blade slides out and thunks into the dirt below, amidst a tiny splatter of clear, iridescent fluid. It's the first actual injury that Asche has suffered in . . . ever, and at the hands of a single, almost ordinary man. No magic or superhuman powers involved. The man before him may be a criminal, but that kind of achievement is the stuff of legends. Were he a man of honour, he'd certainly be known as a hero long before now. The attributes he possesses are so far and away outside of the norm that he might as well exist on an entirely different level. Zwei concludes that, without a doubt, he is the most impressive specimen of his entire species. Armigers, however, don't care for whether history paints an individual as black or white. Pirate or not, this Avian exemplifies qualities that can only be considered objectively superior traits; something someone could call 'the future of their race' if they were so inclined. Killing him would be a crime against the sociological gene pool. Zwei is, in fact, much more interested in seeing where things will go if this man is not only set loose upon the universe again, but with a little push in the right direction. Asche's feet finally crunch down to earth, allowing him to hook the case with one finger. His optics pulse as he regards the gesture of surrender, silent as the last pieces of gravel clatter to the ground. "Are you aware." he begins. "That outside of the mythos of Kluex, it is not uncommon to hear of tales where a mortal, through acts noble or otherwise, to so impress the gods that they render no retribution, but a responsibility in its place?" He momentarily regards his damaged hand, turning it over as the carbon plating slowly loses its superheated glow. "Whether you believe me a divine existence or simply a soulless machine, I will do the same. Go, and know that soon, I will return to you what you have earned, but in doing so, you will take on the expectation that you will use it. Taking profit from this is beneath you, and so is your buyer."
Starbound Flotilla	"I already have my vow. That I will be a god of my own making." The pirate grunts over his radio. "That the universe will know the name 'Thornwing'." Wait, this is THAT GUY?! "I will give you the gratitude due your gift, and then use it as it should be used. You may return what you like to me through the Ring of Thorns. They will bring it to me." His eyes still hold that absolutely tremendous fire of the spirit. In a way, he almost surrenders in a domineering way, in a way that screams that this is his freedom to choose, crimson eyes just absolutely full of spirit and grim determination even as he'e remains in the posture of surrender in the crater. "'Souless machine'. 'Divinity'. Neither. You're proof that I don't have enough strength yet. That's what you are to me." He leaves that last phrase hanging, an unspoken prompt for Asche to take his prize and go.